Dispatch from Paris: The Hand-Written Reservation Books of Paris' Best New Restaurants

by Matt Duckor

on 07/24/14 at 06:00 AM

Our restaurant editor Matt Duckor has hit the road and is filing regular dispatches. Today, a few thoughts from Paris.

The reservation list at Bones in Paris [Photo: Matt Duckor]

Walk into any of Paris' neo-bistros--the much-discussed class of casual restaurants that typically serve adventurous, low cost set menus from ambitious chefs--and the scene is pretty much the same. A (usually) friendly host will ask you for your name and if you have a reservation and, instead of being hidden behind a giant touchscreen monitor, they'll whip out a few loose sheets of paper.

There's no online reservation system you have to game and sign onto at just the right time.Old-fashioned pen and paper is the only thing standing between you and a hot table.

It's one of the only things resembling old-world charm at some of the best new restaurants in Paris.

I saw these hand-written reservation books all over the city at notable spots like Bones and Le Chateaubriand. When I stopped by the latter to see about a reservation, the restaurant's chef Iñaki Aizpitarte came over and filled through a small stack of tattered looking papers, its pages filled with an equal number of actual reservations and scribbled out ones.

"Tuesday at the bar?" he asked.

Absolutely.

"Come at 7:30?"

Oui.

Aizpitarte wrote it down in the book ("Mat? Like this?" -- close enough, chef) with the same Bic mechanical pencil I used in grade school.

And that's how I scored a reservation at the one of the top-rated restaurants in the world. I've got the paper to prove it.